Why I Support Churches (or any religious institution)

I thought it would be easy to write this initially but when I sat down to write the post I began to get very confused about what the Bible means to me, and what Jesus means to me, and what Christianity means to me. I was getting very lost in my head.

So I finally decided to just start at the beginning …

It’s been a tough year for me. My grandmother died, and she wasn’t just a grandmother to me, she was a second mother. For a long time I believed she was only one who loved me unconditionally because I was an insecure child. So she was very, very important to me and she died. And the family was very far away. In the meantime I just started a new job and it’s emotionally tough. And I’d moved out of my home and discovered making new friends is a whole lot harder when you’re not in college.

So things had been building up a little bit.

It had gotten to be one evening where I just discovered I was alone on a Friday night. In an apartment. And I was missing my grandmother. And I realized I had no clue what I was doing with life. I felt very, very alone.

So I was just sitting there staring at a wall.

And my friend called, out of the blue. And my mother called to check in because she hadn’t heard from me in a while.

And then a friend of the family called.

She was calling me to thank me for spending time with her teenage daughter while she and her husband were gone overnight. Which she didn’t need to thank me for because I love their daughter and count her as a friend, despite our age difference. But she was calling to thank me anyway. And I said, ‘listen, we should really get together for dinner, I know I keep saying this and we never do, but we she should.’ And I started to laugh because I’m very flaky when it comes to this family; I keep saying we should meet up and I don’t. So I felt bad. But this family friend just kind of laughed and said ‘don’t worry about it, we love you anyway.’

After I’d hung up, I started to cry, because that was exactly what I needed at that moment. I realized I felt so much better suddenly, and so much less alone.

Then I realized, that’s where I find God.

I can have my issues with the Bible, and I can have my issues with my religion, and I can have my issues with … all of it. But that’s why I believe in God. Because the moments where I’m just sitting, staring at a wall, as they happen from time to time, is the moment when someone calls, or someone says something that I needed to hear. When I’m given what I didn’t even realize I needed to make it through. It didn’t mean my grandmother was back alive, or that I was in any different of a situation, but it meant that I was able to make it through.

Then I called my parents to thank them for raising me in a church community, and for having a family, and for being taught what God is. So instead of me thinking it was just a coincidence, or what a nice happenstance that someone called, I went ‘no, I’m being taken care of. I have something, or someone, watching out for me, and I have a very large family I can come home to at any time.’

And that’s why I think religious institutions, of all faiths, are important. Regardless of how many issues I have with some of the stuff. Because there are going to be, there are, more people like me, who need to be given the chance to know a higher being, and need to feel less alone, and be given a family.

Musings on Faith (The Great Balance)

Faith, religion, beliefs, way of being. Whatever you want to call “it,” it is a journey, never a destination. You will never have all the answers. What made sense in this moment might not tomorrow, or 3 months from now, or in a decade. Conversely, some things may never need to change, but it doesn’t make them universal truths, applicable to all. The point is to keep growing and thinking about more than the present and ourselves, more than the current reality.

A new idea has sprung forth while reading Karen Armstrong’s book A History of God. It doesn’t quite sit right but it’s already poking at my faith, so I thought I’d write it down to see what you (the random person who stumbled across this post) thinks.

To me, there might be such a thing as the Great Being (still playing with the name), which need not include nor exclude the existence of God(s). I see the Universe/Cosmos as being a balance that encompasses all of time and space. What you do and decide will have a reaction, you may just never see it as it could take place anywhere either in the past, present, or future (when referring to time in a linear fashion). As can the actions of others, taken far away and/or in another time, affect you. “Bad” and “good” also stand in balance. Humans can choose to do only good and the balance will remain. This does not mean that doing good is futile, the good forces the equivalent bad to go somewhere else.

In this equation, God is the “good” and the Devil is the “bad.” But that would make them equal parts in a larger picture. The Great Being is that “larger picture.” It would encompass everything, including God. The Great Being would be Good and Bad, and yet neither. Perhaps a better name would be The Great Balance. It comes close to the way Karen Armstrong explains the concept of Brahma.

Karen Armstrong also mentions how God, the idea of God, has changed over time with some versions dying out and others growing to take their place. This is what I’m doing. It is not picking and choosing that which suits me just to appease my conscience. We live in a world that has grown closer through industry and technology. Information is shared quickly and often, and traveling is easier. Maybe my faith must pick from all it encounters in order to find a truth that works for me and this age. Maybe Christianity, and all religions that close themselves off from the the influence of other religions, are antiquated and must die out. Not so anarchy and atheism rise from the ashes, but rather yet another reincarnation of the understanding of God and the universe.

Or maybe I can worship the Christian God in church on Sundays and add on my own worship to that which is beyond all else: The Great Balance.

… How ironic somehow that I would name this greater being The Great Balance, seeing as that is what I seek in life, and have yet to learn. I wish for balance in all aspects of my life. Maybe our vision of a higher being is not so much what that higher being actually “is,” but rather what we ourselves lack in life.

I leave you with this quote from Karen Armstrong’s A History of God:

“After enlightenment, a man or woman must return to the marketplace and practice compassion for all living beings.”